Adobe Lightroom 1.1 update
I just downloaded the Lightroom 1.1 upgrade and it is even more amazing. They added monitor detection which was a HUGE gripe of mine. Lightroom pretty much does it for me wink.gif On first launch I was frustrated to find that my collections were reset and not saved anymore… here is why.
New additions are:
Referencing to Catalogs have changed. Before you referrence all images in one place, which sucked. But now you can create catalogs which allows for easy importing and exporting of catalogs. This is cool in its own way but now you have to open and close catalogs because you can only have one open at a time… Maybe the next version will have catalog tabbing, we can only hope. It does help you out because you can save the catalog in the same directory as the images and move catalogs between computers easily.
Importing images from a flash card now allows you to import the images as they are or convert them to native DMG format which I like because it does away with XMP attachments which is a nightmare after running a preset on all of my images. 1000 wedding images after a preset would result in an additional 1000 XMP files. The import function allows you to check Eject card after import which is cool also. I am always forgetting to eject a card before pulling it out.
There is this little Paint Sprayer button that allows you to add attributes to images like Keywords, Labels, Ratings, Metadata, Settings, Rotation and Flag. Its pretty neat… They replaced the stamp tool which only allowed for keyword cloning with this tool.
The Preferences for Lightroom is a lot different. At the bottom of the prefs section there is a cataglog prefs section.
You can change the panel end caps which I think is funny because Im sure it came about due to people in the forums complaining…
Synchronize folder will allow Lightroom to update folders that you may be accessing via a remote drive or location. This is cool because I have a shared RAID storage device in my office.
The Metadata browser has a lot of additional options for seaching including by the color label. My favorite would be using the show ISO levels. This allows me to compare images which helps me to better figure out what settings I should be using in which lighting situations.
Presets can be put into subcategories. Which is nice because I have my own presets and I also have DavidJay’s Lightroom Presets as well. Now the list can be short rather then taking up the whole column.
In the Develop module you will notice Camera Raw 4.1 features including Sharpening (YES!!!) Masking is the coolest in the sharpening sliders because it will allow you to sharpen just the edges. The Clarity slider under the Presence section is a nice adjustment. It seems to kind of give the image a little punchiness. Similar to the old Curves adjustment some of us use to bump color depth.
In the Slideshow module you will notice that when you do slideshows the transitions are cleaner, this is due to a upgrade in the slideshow engine. You can now select certain images to display in the slideshow rather then having to add a Star level to it like I have done forever…
In the Print module you can select the print resolution as a option to change or use the native resolution your image was created in. Draft printing mode is cool because it will let you print a quick sample.
The web module can now use images by slection in the film strip also. You can now add drop shadows to the images and choose the color for the image selection border. You can also change the photo border. The templates are now organized into subcategories also which makes for better use of space.
